Monday is my day off and as it turns out I ended up having a long lie in, I hadn't intended to have one but with no alarm and two surprisingly patient cats I slept until almost 10:30 am. I wandered down stairs to feed the cats and make tea, and wandered back up again, sipped tea and read, but after fifteen minutes the guilt crept in. Voices in my head demanded to know what I thought I was doing, doing nothing, and instructed me that I should use my day off more constructively, I nearly gave in to them, and would have if it weren't for a deeper awareness of a stiller more gentle voice, a voice that invited me to read and pray, a voice that led me into a deeper time of simply being with God.
I am grateful for the still small voice, and grateful that today I had ears to hear her calling to me, I believe that this is the voice of the Spirit, the voice of wisdom, a voice who invites me to engage with a deeper need than having vacuumed carpets, the health and well-being of my heart and soul. Sadly it is a voice that I too often block out in the rush and tumble of life.
As I think on this in the light of Advent, a season that calls us to engage with waiting in readiness for Christs return I am struck by how impatient I am not only with things in life but also with myself. I am aware that there are times in life when we need to go a bit slower, when we need to rest and to heal, when we need to wait and to listen, perhaps even to hear echoed in our own groaning the groans and cries of a world longing to be released into God's promised completion.
This morning I engaged with my souls groaning and in the groaning I found God, in order to be released into the possibilities of God's promises I had to let go of the "ought's" and "should's" that make such loud demands of me. I had to let go of my own Martha mentality that tells me I am not doing enough and continually berates me for that. I also had to let go of a desire to prove myself to others, to show that I am on top of things.
Advent invites us to wait, for me today that waiting held echoes of Gethsemane but rather than falling asleep I had already slept and was able to enter into a prayerful waiting time, I was blessed by entering into it. I haven't done much today, I have read and prayed and walked on the beach, it was the same beach I walked on on Saturday, the beach where I experienced the glory of God, that glory was still there today but it a more subtle and subdues way, yet God came close.
